Okay. Trying to finish up 2009. A few more wedding videos in Olympia, Seattle, Tacoma and outlying areas. Then I moved on to some other really cool projects.
Toward the tail end of summer ’09, I was the wedding videographer for Amber and Justin’s wedding. The wedding was at a beautiful historic house in the Sumner area, and it could not have been a more beautiful day. Here is the Highlight Reel from the wedding.
I did the videography on a couple more weddings that year, but I think it’s about time to move this blog on to what I consider to be my single most monumental achievement of 2009. Next blog – Mutually Assured Productions and The Van Job.
Okay, it’s been well over a year since I’ve written on the blog here. So I’m going to start way back when I stopped updating it, and spend the next few weeks covering everything I missed; bringing it up to date. Sometimes this commercial and wedding video production gig here in Olympia, Seattle, and Tacoma keeps me so busy I don’t always have time to update. Wow, what an understatement!
Starting with Jasmin and Louis. June 27th, 2009. Jasmin and Louis booked early, which is great. Their wedding was at St. Ignacio’s Chapel, which is on the campus of Seattle City U. Beautiful church, really amazing. I loved shooting there, and would love to do it again. The architect of the church described the theme of his design as “7 bottles of light.” It’s really pretty.
Jasmin and Louis’s wedding was the first opportunity I had to utilize the camera I had just purchased; Panasonic’s HMC-150 AVCCAM. This is an HD camera that takes advantage of a relatively new video compression coded called AVCHD. After many months of researching, this was the HD camera I decided to buy. Panasonic had earned my loyalty years before with their DVX-100 line of cameras. Although the final product went out in standard definition, the HD stuff looks far superior, even on a DVD.
Anyway, here’s a couple of video clips from Jasmin and Louis’s wedding! The first clip is the pre-ceremony montage. This was shot exclusively with the HMC-150.
Next is the post-ceremony montage. This portion was shot with a combination of the DVX and HMC. You can actually see the difference between the two cameras when it switches. This is primarily due to adjusting the aspect ratio of the two cameras to match up properly.
Decided to walk down to the old Olympia Brewery and film the Deschutes River a little bit this morning. We’ve had record flooding in local rivers. This is due in part to a lot of rain in the past few days, but mostly because of our record snowfall the last weeks of December, coupled with unseasonably warm temperatures during the rain. It all melts, now I-5 is closed in Chehalis to the South, and Tacoma to the North, really effectively isolating Olympia from the world. Sweet! Olympia is pretty much one of the raddest places anyway.
I shot this in 60 frames per second to get some sweet slow motion action. No, my camera is not HDV, and yes, it can shoot 60fps. Hooray DVX100b!
A couple of updates here in the second week of January are needed.
Like that snow? Ridiculous. Glad it’s gone, really. When I plunged a yardstick in to the flattest area of my backyard it read 17 inches. Seriously. I’m so delighted that the rain is back, I’m thinking about putting on my dancing shoes and doing a tap number in the middle of my street.
Just a little footage captured during my boredom while snowed in on the 7th day. While it was surely driving me a little stir-crazy, I got a little cabin fever to be sure, it was also a great opportunity for productivity in the editing department.
Nick and Lois had wanted to know if I could get them their wedding video by Christmas. Well, it would be a little on the narrow side, I told them I couldn’t make any promises, but would do what I could.
Sunday December 21st, 1st day of winter, 5th or 6th consecutive snow day in our region; I agree to meet Nick and Lois to hand deliver their DVD’s, as I don’t know if the USPS could effectively deliver the package in 3 days, with the holiday, and the conditions.
My car being stuck, my friend John drives me to the Kinko’s where I print the DVD sleeves. Everything is looking good, we stop and buy tubes for sledding while we’re out and about. I need to get home, insert the sleeves into the DVD cases, with the DVD’s and make the package complete. Then to a local coffee joint for delivery.
Unfortunately, as we return to my house, John gets his car stuck on a pile of snow in what would be the only area he could really park. The plow has been piling it up for the last 4 or 5 days. John ends up staying on the couch that night, getting a ride to work in the morning. The next day after work, we dug him out and he got home.
Nick and Lois ended up meeting me at the bottom of my hill, where I ran through the snow piled up almost 2 feet high, while it was snowing, and hand delivered the DVD’s of their wedding to them, so that they could have them in time to give their parents for Christmas!
Merry Christmas Nick and Lois!
Their video turned out great, and though I like the Pre-Ceremony Montage a lot, I’m going to share the Post-Ceremony Montage here –
So here is what Nick and Lois had to say about their wedding video -
Ken,
WE LOVE IT!! It was just what I wanted… seriously!! I am picky and you pleased me very much.
It was last minute but it was soo needed to create our lifetime memory of that special day
Thank you,
Nick and Lois
Once again, I feel I should iterate that the emphasis in quotes from clients is always original, never added! I love it when a plan comes together! Seriously, not much makes me feel better than knowing a client is happy with the work I’ve provided.
Nick and Lois’s wedding also marks a kind of monumental occasion for me business-wise, in that for the 3 years I’ve been doing video production work professionally I’ve never booked a wedding after September. Theirs was November 15th. Another good thing is that ’09 is already starting to fill up. Good stuff!
Here is the Highlight Reel from Nick and Lois’s wedding.
Yeesh. I need to get in the habit of updating this thing more frequently. Here it is though, a long overdue update, and this time there will be no embedded videos. No embedded videos because it would be illegal for me to feature these videos that I’ve shot for my own marketing purposes.
But I can LINK to them.
Last couple weeks of August, I get a call from a production company in LA asking if I’d be able to shoot some commercials for them in our area. After considering their offer I quite willingly accepted. For the next two months I shot over a dozen commercials for this company. This company is contracted by yellowbook.com, and in turn they contract me to do the shoots. I’ve travelled as far as Maple Valley and North Bend doing these, there have been several in Seattle, and a few in Tacoma.
I really enjoy shooting for these guys and I’m hapy with the way most of the videos came out. There are a couple I’m not incredibly proud of, some because of a critical view of my own work, others because I didn’t appreciate what the editors had done with it.
Anyway, those of you who are here reading this may be interested in seeing a couple. I’m certainly interested in sharing them, so here come the links! Each video is 30 seconds or 1 minute in length.
The Auto Buff autobody repair and detail shop in West Seattle.
Summers Chiropractic and Massage in Federal Way. I was a bit disappointed with the editing in this one, and wish they had picked a different opening shot.
It looks like that’s all that’s live at this time. There are a few more I’ve shot that aren’t completed yet, but I think there are plenty here to give you an idea of what these shoots are all about. They’re a lot of fun to work on, and they pay decent. Unfortunately I think the economic downturn we’re seeing has taken a chunk out of how many gigs I was getting. All of these were done in September and October, I’ve only gotten 3 new ones in the month of November. Things are slowing down…
